Lesson Plan: Understanding Dissent and the Role of Opposition Voices

Protests are effectively banned in Russia, and a spate of arrests in the days after Mr. Navalny’s death show the extent to which the authorities are willing to suppress public displays of anger or mourning. In Mr. Putin’s Russia, where even the mildest dissent can risk detention, leaving flowers at an improvised memorial for Mr. Navalny can serve as a form of protest.

What is your reaction to Mr. Navalny’s death, and to the crushing of dissent in Russia?

How important are voices of dissent to a country? Why does the right to protest against one’s government matter?

The death of Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, Aleksei A. Navalny, at a remote Arctic prison on Friday ended one of the most audacious political careers of modern times and left wartime Russia without its most charismatic antiwar voice.

Mr. Navalny, whose death was reported by Russian authorities, stood as the most outspoken critic of President Vladimir V. Putin for more than a decade, harnessing broad opposition to the Russian leader more successfully than any other foe of the Kremlin. After surviving a poisoning widely seen as the Kremlin’s doing in 2020 and recovering in Germany, Mr. Navalny returned to Russia in 2021, and was immediately arrested.

But Mr. Navalny, a joking, gregarious, straight-talking former real estate lawyer, stayed relevant even from prison, publishing Instagram posts via messages relayed by his lawyers that were at once humorous and outraged. He pleaded with Russians not to give up or give in to their fears, and railed against the “criminal” war in Ukraine, which he said would bring the “continued impoverishment of Russian people.”

The reports of his death stunned his supporters and politicians around the world. Mikhail Vinogradov, a Moscow political analyst, described it as the most shocking death of a Russian politician in the country’s post-Soviet history. Russians gathered for impromptu vigils in cities around the world, while images of people laying flowers at memorial sites in Russian cities ricocheted across social media.

In “With Prison Certain and Death Likely, Why Did Navalny Return?” Neil MacFarquhar writes:

There was one question that Russians repeatedly asked the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, who died in a remote Arctic penal colony on Friday, and he confessed that he found it a little annoying.

Why, after surviving a fatal poisoning attempt widely blamed on the Kremlin, had he returned to Russia from his extended convalescence abroad to face certain imprisonment and possible death? Even his prison guards, turning off their recording devices, asked him why he had come back, he said.

“I don’t want to give up either my country or my beliefs,” Mr. Navalny wrote in a Jan. 17 Facebook post to mark the third anniversary of his return and arrest in 2021. “I cannot betray either the first or the second. If your beliefs are worth something, you must be willing to stand up for them. And if necessary, make some sacrifices.”

That was the direct answer, but for many Russians, both those who knew him and those who did not, the issue was more complex. Some of them considered it almost a classical Greek tragedy: The hero, knowing that he is doomed, returns home anyway because, well, if he didn’t, he would not be the hero.

Mr. Navalny’s motto was that there was no reason to fear the authoritarian government of President Vladimir V. Putin. He wanted to put that into practice, Russian commentators said, and as an activist who thrived on agitation, he feared sinking into irrelevancy in exile. The decision won him new respect and followers as he continued to lambast the Kremlin from his prison cell, but it also cost him his life.

Students, read one or both articles and then tell us:

• What is your reaction to Mr. Navalny’s death, and to the crushing of dissent in Russia? Why do you think his death has inspired such strong reactions, both in Russia and around the world?

• How important is the right to protest — and especially, protest against one’s government? Have you ever participated in a protest? If so, what did it mean to you? If you live in a place where you can freely protest, do you take that right for granted?

• How do you make sense of Mr. Navalny’s decision to return to his homeland after he was poisoned? Do you agree with his assertion that we must be willing to stand up and make sacrifices for our beliefs?

• What other voices of dissent (people who have stood up to advocate a better world), from the past or present, do you admire? Why do you admire them?

• What, if anything, are you willing to stand up for — even if it might mean sacrificing something? Tell us about a time when you stood up for your beliefs in a big or small way.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print. Comment here.